Linking Creativity Anxiety to Two Creative Cognitive Styles Through Creative Self-Efficacy and Novelty Seeking

While creativity anxiety has been found to have negative relationships with various creative outcomes, whether creativity anxiety would also negatively influence creative cognitive styles (i.e. idea generation; idea selection) and the mechanisms underlying these impacts are still unknown. Based on the Self-Efficacy Theory (SET) and the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model (DPCM), we designed cross-sectional and cross-lagged models to examine the potential chain mediating effects of creative self-efficacy and novelty seeking in the influence of creative anxiety on creative cognitive styles. Five hundred and ninety-one participants were recruited to complete self-report measures of creativity anxiety, creative self-efficacy, novelty seeking, and creative cognitive styles at Time1, with 301 participants conducting a second wave of surveys within a year interval (Time 2). Results in both models showed that creativity anxiety negatively predicted idea generation and selection. More importantly, both mediation analyses showed that creativity anxiety negatively predicted idea generation indirectly through creative self-efficacy and then novelty seeking. However, creativity anxiety negatively predicted idea selection only through creative self-efficacy. This study provides empirical evidence for the negative effect of creativity anxiety on creative cognitive styles and illustrates that creative self-efficacy and novelty seeking could explain these impacts in different mediating patterns.